085: What Doesn't Kill You
by Werewolf One's 200 Themes
Summary: This was the third time Natasha was stuck with him when he lost control, and she was starting to wonder if someone wasn't planning it to happen that way.


I feel awkward writing about the Avengers because, with as many comics I've read over the years, I've never read a single Avengers issue. So this is 100% movie. Sorry if anybody is out of character, I don't know these people very well. I love them though.  
Oh, and my apologies for any grammar mistakes- this story was more edit-heavy than my usual. Feel free to point out any I missed.  
Update: Thanks to Rosaroma for suggesting the ending, that really ties it up nicely. You're great Rosaroma, and thanks for the review!

-o-

This was the third time Natasha was stuck with him when he lost control, and she was starting to wonder if someone wasn't planning it to happen that way.

There couldn't be a worse time for him to transform, but she figured that was the point. He only lost it during bad situations. This was pretty bad: they were about a hundred feet down a vertical maintenance shaft that went at least another five hundred feet below them. Not two minutes ago a huge explosion had burst through one side of the shaft, right at their level, bending the pipes, rebar, plaster, and metal around the elevator platform they were standing on. She immediately turned, survival training kicking in: push Banner down, cover his head and her own, try to make as much cover with their bodies as possible. Several more blasts followed in quick succession, ones that Natasha recognized as Tony's hand cannons. It stopped the lift cold: the grate around them had kept them from getting killed, but now it was twisted around them like a cage and the whole elevator was stuck immobile in a mess of rubble. The damaged grate pushed them together, much too close for comfort for either of them, and, from Natasha's point of view, making a terrible situation unavoidable.

"Banner, are you okay?" She kept her voice calm and level though she felt like yelling. The damn life was only about 6x5 feet to begin with, obviously meant for only one worker and a tool chest, and now with the twisted grating she didn't have more than six inches to back away from him. She desperately did not want to be stuck with the Hulk in here.

His silence was frightening. Even with their one crappy light still flickering above she could see him tremble, see his hands ball into fists and his muscles tense, and feel his shudders where her knees still touched his legs.

"AHHH- NATASHA-" He choked out the words painfully, giving up on verbal communication. Bruce turned away from her, pushing himself against the other end of the grate, letting the broken points scratch at his skin. He held out a shaking arm and tried to push her away, though he only pushed her into the rebar behind her.

"Relax Bruce, we're fine, we're fine." She kept repeating it to him, soothingly. "We're fine, we're not under attack. Tony is dealing with whatever caused the explosion." Soothing, like talking to a child. Show him you aren't afraid, she thought, show him the situation isn't bad.

She reached out, hesitant to touch him but desperate enough and out of options to try anyway. Not looking away from his face, her fingers touched his back lightly. Even through his shirt she could feel the muscles bunched painfully, rock hard and shaking.

He flinched and she drew away quickly, and he yelled and shuddered and jerked. Still no green, though it didn't comfort her. It only took a second, even less, to fully transform. She remembered their first battle, when he'd showed up unexpectedly and though they were doubtful, her most of all, he'd transformed right in front of their eyes and didn't try to kill any of them.

That's it, she thought. That's it. "Bruce, Bruce listen to me." She got up close to him, touched him again, put one hand on his arm and tried to to flinch at the unnatural rippling of his muscles beneath his skin. His arm was already almost twice as big as it had been. "You need to let go, Bruce. Don't fight him, let him out without the anger."

"CAN'T-"

His voice sounded more animal than human. "YES Bruce, it's our only chance to get through this, let go and accept hi-"

He flung his arm at her with dizzying speed, and if she hadn't been trained as a spy and assassin for her whole life she'd be dead. But she ducked as well as she could and his fist embedded into the grate, leaving a dent the size of her head. He'd completely lost it. His skin flushed green and in an instant he was four times his normal size. The metal and plaster around him stretched and crumbled, the rebar shrieking as it made room for his girth. Natasha tried to put as much room as she could between them, forcing herself backwards through the bent grating, squeezing beneath the twisted metal as well as she could. The Hulk's yells were deafening. They shook the entire maintenance shaft and made her eardrums feel like they would split open, like he was splitting open the walls of the elevator and the shaft around them just to make room to stand.

There was a hole in the bottom of the lift, where the grate had separated from the floor. She backed up to is and kicked at it, tried to worry it open and, hopefully, swing to the wall of the shaft. From there she'd be able to climb down until she got to the next floor-

He roared and slammed his fist at the wall again. A rain of metal chunks and plaster dust came raining down: he'd finally broken through the ceiling of the lift. The gap between the wall and the floor had opened ever so slightly and she began to slip through, feet first, holding on to the metal as she went. Slowly, don't attract his attention, she reminded herself. Stealth was her only viable tool against the powerhouse.

She was about half-way through and her feet touched the pipes on the shaft wall when the Hulk took a leap, trying to climb up through the hole he'd torn in the top of the lift. What was _left_ of the top of the lift. There was a great awful shudder and the lift moved down. Natasha's legs were pushed painfully into the wall and she tried to curl them in, climb back up as the Hulk struggled his way out. But the grate above her was pushed back down under his weight, piercing and crushing her torso. She bit down a scream as it squeezed her, tried wriggling free. She couldn't move forward without the metal scraping into her, but she couldn't move backwards at all. Back into the lift, then, and she pulled herself, and cried out as the metal tore her skin.

Another roar from the Hulk above her, and the elevator lowered another foot. One of her legs was caught in the broken shaft wall and it stretched painfully back in the wrong direction, threatening a nasty break. The lift slid down, centimeter by centimeter, as the green giant stood above it tearing up the surrounding wall.

"AHHHH- STOP!" Tears welled up in her eyes from pain, angry at herself for getting in to such a stupid mess so quickly. "_STOP!_"

In an instant a giant green hand reached down, holding the lift by the edge and perhaps holding on to the pipes with the other, though she couldn't see from her position and the wavering darkness in her eyes.

After a second his head peered in, confused and angry-looking. Her pulse and breathing quickened, though she struggled to draw in air, her lungs and chest feeling compressed against the unforgiving metal. She was vaguely aware of blood around her, could start to smell it as it seeped, though she couldn't feel too much over the pain in her leg.

The Hulk dropped into the lift. It went down another couple inches and she screamed as her leg was stretched again. She was surprised it hadn't snapped already; there was pressure on her ankle, knee, hip, and femur, and she probably wouldn't survive much less keep her leg if they kept this up.

He flinched at her scream, then slammed his fists on the lift floor and roared at her. She flung her head down and covered it with her arms, waiting for the blows.

Nothing came. She opened her eyes, startled and confused through the pain, though she kept herself from whimpering. She felt ashamed: the only time she whimpered was during interrogation. She'd been in worse fixes than this, come even closer to dying than this.

All she could hear was his breathing, like a huge animal standing above her, and she could feel the breaths on her hair and hands. She slowly peeked around her arms to look up at him.

Big brown eyes stared back at her in an expression that was perpetually furious. Why hadn't he smashed her to pieces? At least with her head crushed she wouldn't suffer a painful death from her leg being ripped off.

He lifted his hand and she covered her head again. But instead of being smashed, big fingers curled around her torso. He squeezed her, and she thought she'd suffocate, but then she was being lifted. The grating above her scraped along her back and rear, taking off bits of uniform and skin before relinquishing its grasp on her. She felt small pops and cracks as her ribs her pushed past the metal but she didn't have the breath in her to yell. Finally her leg was pulling free of the pipes, first getting tighter and tighter and more painful until there was an load snap. She shuddered, her whole body going limp, but finally she was free of the lift. There was an awful haze of pain and she felt for a moment she would pass out, but then the grip around her loosened and she could breath again. She gulped in air as fast and deep as the pain her ribs allowed her, which wasn't very fast or deep, but it felt so sweet to breath again. She kept her eyes closed even as the beast held her, holding her pressed to his side with one arm as he climbed his way out of the falling elevator. She could feel them sinking down, slowly at first then quicker, felt jostled and bumped as he maneuvered out of hole at the top and grabbed on to the wall. She could hear the thing screeching downwards below them, sending off sparks as the fail-safes attempted to stop the plummet. Then the Hulk hefted her up onto his shoulder so he could return to tearing at the wall, and she was filled with pain and darkness before her mind finally gave out.

-o-

Tony and Clint watched Natasha tried to blinked herself awake. For a moment it looked like it was going to work, but then she took a deep, labored breath and closed her eyes again, sinking back into what they hoped was a painless sleep.

"Too damn close," Clint muttered from her bed. She was out of danger now, so he tried to stop worrying. He still felt tense and anxious, but he could feel it fading.

They'd found the Hulk holding Natasha a couple levels down, after tearing through several walls and inadvertently smashing the mechanical drones that had gone after Tony and Steve when they tripped the security system. They'd stolen the power source to stop that douche Adaptoid and his robotic soldierbots, but thanks to one chance explosion Bruce hadn't made it to the bottom level lab to find out his further plans. In Clint's eyes it was a failed mission.

"She's a strong one. That's how they make 'em in Russia: they build the children out of steel and fuel them with vodka and the souls of people who died of hypothermia. We still haven't figured out how the mechanics work, but we think it's a layered mechanics, machines within machines within machines, like a big Matryoshka doll..." He snapped his fingers and grinned. "_Machineception_!"

"He could have killed her." Clint didn't turn around as he spoke for fear of losing his temper. He understood why Tony was being unusually stupid, but he still didn't appreciate it. "That beast could have torn her in two. She got lucky."

The first times, even counting the time right before their first battle together, had not ended as badly as this one. She'd gotten off with minor injuries in comparison. Before, the rest of the team had been there to distract the Hulk, allowing her to make a run for it. By nature of her skill set she was least prepared of all of them to deal with the Hulk one on one, and they were all aware of it. Despite their carefully planned missions, something always went wrong and so far there were four separate incidents of Natasha and Bruce ending up trapped apart from the rest of the team. Two of those times he'd gone Hulk. Well, three, after this last one.

"She is a trained spy-assassin-lady," Tony said, suddenly defensive. "And a big girl. She knows exactly what she's getting into working with S.H.I.E.L.D. and is more than capable of taking care of herself... Besides, you've already got your _ferocious beast_ caged up and locked away, there's no point in complaining about him."

Clint nodded, because he was sort of right, though he wished Tony would go mess with someone else's patience for a while. They'd apprehended Hulk after several hours fighting with him, with the dual goal of getting Natasha out of his grasp and getting him back to S.H.I.E.L.D. without destroying everything on the way. Eventually they'd just lured him to the jet and put him in a temporary cage which barely held until they got back to HQ, where Natasha had been rushed into medical and had been there for about eight hours until they'd let anyone see her. Banner had been transferred to their unbreakable Hulk cage on-base where as far as Clint knew he was still Mr. Jolly Green Giant. They hadn't let Tony stay with him, which is why the insufferable genius was bothering Clint right now. They guy go so sensitive about locking Banner up. What else where they gonna do with him?

"Bruce is a fine guy, but how many more times can we let this happen? Until he kills somebody? He's not safe to be around, much less have on the team."

"Think of it like practice. He obviously wasn't 'roid raging with the Widow Maker in his hands- you guys were just a little on edge from fighting those drones. See? We _learned_ something today. Next one will go much smoother."

"He was throwing _walls_ at us and Natasha was dripping blood from every surface of her body. I don't think there was another course of action we _could_ have taken." Except her face, he thought. He'd seen her get into pretty bad scrapes but never did she get a scratch on her face.

"With that attitude we will never solve this team issue thing that's growing between us." Tony started walking for the door in that gruff, stubborn teenager way he did.

Clint sighed, looking back to Natasha's sleeping face. He didn't want to think about all the damage that was hidden under the bedsheets. "She'll never trust him after this.."

Tony stopped to look back at her, thinking to himself, none of you will. He turned to go.

"I ..."

The voice, fragile but strong, came from the bed. Natasha hadn't opened her eyes, but she was struggling to breath and speak. She coughed and moved an arm to rub at the oxygen tube in her nose. Clint put his hand over hers, moving her arm away so she didn't mess with it. "Are you alright?" He asked gently. "What happened?"

She tried a smile, peeked her eyes open but closed them again at the bright lights. "Another... successful... interrogation..."

Tony waved a finger at her and tsked. "Don't try to pass this off as your clever interrogation techniques you crazy Russian."

She laughed a bit, coughed as a result. "I trust him..."

The two men glanced at each other; if Natasha was laughing she was still pretty out of it. "You trust Banner?" Clint asked.

She shook her head, her eyes still stubbornly closed against the bright lights of the room. "Not Banner... I trust... the Hulk. He didn't. Hurt me. I _trust_ him." She sounded about as confused as they where at her words, though she also had a host of medications flowing through her broken body.

Her heart rate and breathing went up as she spoke and she became visibly exhausted. Clint stroked her hand soothingly, not looking at her any longer but through he, his thoughts churning. They didn't try to get more out of her, and for a while just sat there, both listening to the sound of her breathing calm.

"So." Trust Tony to break any peaceful silences, Clint thought. "Apparently, the way to the woman's heart is to... not kill her. Of course you know all about that, don't you." He gave Clint a 'take that as you will' look, which Clint didn't gratify him with a response to. Tony turned to go again, this time strolling out the door with an air of confidence. He said back, wistfully, so Clint could hear him, "If only it where that easy with most women!"

-o-

Bruce sad at the table in the main briefing room, wrapped in a blanket to cover his nakedness and shield his skin from the cold. Whoever had gone to get him some new clothes had probably forgotten, or was playing some joke on him, with how long the guy was taking. He supposed it was better than the times he'd come to naked in the middle of nowhere: at least now he had a blanket.  
He stared at the screen in front of him. It showed Natasha laying in the bed in medical, the two others moving in and out of the camera's view. He'd been monitoring her for about an hour, and watching Clint watching her, ever since the other guy had finally gone away. He could hear, mostly, what they said through the speakers. He figured they'd be mad at him. He'd screwed up yet another mission, he was mad at himself. And apparently he'd almost killed Natasha, the way Clint was going off (though bless Tony's heart for... well, being Tony). He felt another wave of guilt and wondered for the seventh or eighth time if he could get away with walking out the door, back to his cage, and launching himself off the heliplane. He almost _killed_ her. What was he even doing on this team?  
Natasha said something that made the other men stop and look at her curiously. Bruce couldn't quite pick it up.  
She spoke again, so softly, and Tony shook his finger and chided her.  
Natasha coughed a bit, and said what sounded like but couldn't possibly be the word "trust". Bruce leaned forward, ears perked.  
Clint asked "You trust Banner?" and she shook her head. Of course she didn't. It was almost a relief to hear it; no pretending or guessing her exact intentions. Nor Clint's, he supposed. He didn't even trust himself. He certainly didn't deserve it from the rest of them.

Her next words threw him off. "...the Hulk. He didn't hurt me. I trust him."  
It sort of echoed in his head. "The Hulk. I trust him." He didn't even have a reaction to it. What were you supposed to feel when someone said they trusted you? It had been so long since anyone had felt that way towards him. How could she trust him when he couldn't trust himself. But still, there were the words, right out of those speakers.

Bruce played it over in his head. "I trust him. I trust him." He tried to imagine her standing there before him, looking him in the eyes, and saying it again. "I trust you."  
The vision made him feel odd and self-conscious. No, this was different. This was something else. She was probably feeling bad for him (but why?) and trying not to get him kicked off the team (though they'd be better off if he did leave).

But he sat there for a while, still watching the screen. He hadn't heard the rest of their conversation and wasn't paying much attention now. He just stared down at her sleeping form, and, with the tiniest hint of a smile, he replayed her words in his head.

"I trust him. I trust him."

-o-

#85 Teamwork


End file.
